Fiducci fell onto his backside and began to splash away as the hulking shape of the vampire stalked towards him, clawed fingers flexing in eagerness.
‘I know your kind, necromancer... remoras, clinging to king sharks. Thought you’d twist this sacred debt to your benefit, eh? Thought you’d make the captain your play-pretty, your cabin boy, eh? I’ll give you a taste of the lash...’
As Dubnitz retrieved his sword, he saw Fiducci’s hand dart into his robes and felt a sinking sensation in his gut as he realised just what the little man was after. ‘No!’ he said, darting forward. The vampire, between him and Fiducci, turned and caught him, wrenching him into the air.
‘I’ll settle our account first then, shall I?’ the captain gurgled, eyes blazing. Behind him, Fiducci stuffed the scrimshaw whistle between his lips and blew a wet melody. Dubnitz, desperate, thrust his fingers into the leaking wound in the vampire’s skull. The creature shrieked and released him, and Dubnitz dropped heavily to the dock. He could feel the wood trembling and hear the smashing of great bodies through the Shallows. The wood cracked and burst abruptly as a number of horrible shapes thrust their way up in response to Fiducci’s summons.
Cutlass in hand again, the captain swung it as the first of Stromfel’s Children dove for the vampire, wide mouth gaping. The vampire cleaved the thing in two and met the next, matching it snarl for snarl. Dubnitz barely reclaimed his own sword in time to fend off his own attackers. As they fought, Fiducci blew on the whistle again and again, until the becalmed harbour waters fairly boiled with heaving piscine nightmares. Where only moments before the sea had given up its dead, it now gave forth every monstrosity that stirred in the deep silt. Krakens with clashing beaks and frenzied sharks made mad war on the floating dead and the monstrous offspring of the storm-god. Alarm bells sang out as the docks came under attack.
Dubnitz stabbed something with entirely too many flippers and stepped past it, reaching for Fiducci, who seemed enraptured by the chaos he had caused. Dubnitz grabbed the necromancer around the back of the neck and flung him to the ground. ‘You! Send them back!’ he snapped.
‘I think not! If Franco Fiducci is to be thwarted, the city itself shall pay!’ the necromancer yowled. ‘And you with it!’ He yanked a dagger from his robes and stabbed wildly at Dubnitz.
The knight caught his arm and bent it back, forcing Fiducci to drop the blade. Driving his sword into the dock, he made a grab for Fiducci’s other hand, where the whistle lurked. ‘Give me that!’
‘Get off of me you oaf!’ Fiducci shrilled, struggling. The whistle slipped out of his grasp and Dubnitz batted it aside, into the thick of the confusion. Fiducci screamed and scrambled after it even as the shark-shape of the captain cleaved its way towards them.
‘I’ll have my due one way or another, necromancer!’ the captain roared.
Dubnitz jerked his sword up and the cutlass scraped sparks the length of the interposed blade. Berserk, the vampire slashed at him, all pretence of humanity now gone from its form and feature. It hammered at him as if seeking to pound him flat, and he was in no shape to prevent it. It was only stubbornness keeping him upright and even that was fast fading.
‘Dubnitz!’
He looked down as something skittered across the dock and saw a medallion emblazoned with Manann’s sigil. He gave a furious shove, pushing the captain back long enough to clear enough room for him to snatch the medallion up. As the vampire swooped down on him again, he shoved the sigil into its face. The captain screeched and stumbled back, covering its eyes. Dubnitz’s flush of victory faded quickly; he could only keep the beast at bay so long.
The trill of a whistle cut the air. Large shapes blundered out of the mist like hounds on the scent, and Dubnitz tensed, preparing for the attack. Only it was not be. The Shallows-beasts leapt on the captain, one after another, dogpiling the vampire beneath a mound of mutated flesh. The captain’s angry shriek was cut abruptly short as the dock gave way in a fashion reminiscent of Dubnitz’s earlier plunge.
Dubnitz hurried to the edge of the hole, his whole body aching. The captain glared up at him, jaws working, bloody foam bubbling from between ragged lips. A jagged spear of wood had been shoved up through the vampire’s back and out through its chest. A claw stretched out towards Dubnitz with hateful intent and then sagged as the hell-light faded from the creature’s eyes. The body slumped and began to dissolve like seaweed in the morning tide. Dubnitz sank back and sat down, his body shuddering with exhaustion and not a little relief.
‘I’ll have my medallion back now, if you please,’ Goodweather said. The priestess picked her way carefully through the debris. Dubnitz looked at her wearily.
‘The women?’
‘Safe with the watchmen. Are you unhurt?’
‘Yes. Yourself?’
‘As well as can be expected,’ she said, taking her medallion back and hanging it around her neck. ‘My intervention appears to have been timely.’
‘It’s becoming a habit with you,’ Dubnitz said. ‘That wave–’
‘You’re welcome.’ Goodweather opened her hand and showed him the whistle. ‘And this will go back in the vault where it belongs.’
‘I don’t see Fiducci anywhere. I suppose it’s too much to ask that the little rat got eaten by one of his own monsters...’ Dubnitz sighed and stood. The mist was beginning to clear with the captain’s demise and the fires were being put out. ‘How in the name of Manann’s trident am I going to explain any of this to Ogg?’
‘I’m sure you’ll think of something. As long as it’s better than your explanation about the goat and the octopus,’ Goodweather said, scattering salt over the bodies of the dead and beginning the rites of her order.
Dubnitz laughed, and the sound was echoed by the cries of the returning seabirds. The birds swooped and dove and followed the retreating mist back out to sea, as the wind picked up once more and the calm faded at last.
LESSER EVILS
Tom Foster
As the lander cut through the last few layers of cloud, Lucan Vaughn checked his lasgun again.
Twenty years with a gun in my hand and I still don’t trust my weapons. A sudden blast of turbulence rocked the crew compartment, and his backpack thumped against his shoulders.
Nietzin, Vaughn’s second-in-command, had been standing by the door, watching their journey through the tiny window. As the turbulence shook them he staggered, staying upright with an effort. From his seat opposite Vaughn, Andus ‘Fane’ Garren laughed. Nietzin glanced at him, eyes bitter and hard. The engines rumbled around them.
Time to take control, Vaughn thought. He leaned round and pressed the intercom. ‘How long, Lao?’
‘Let’s see...’ Cornelius Lao sounded refined and bored. Vaughn knew it was a pose, picked up in his old career in a Navy fighter wing. ‘Just over ten minutes, I’d say.’
Vaughn closed the intercom and looked around the darkened cabin. ‘All right, ten minutes. Everyone check their gear and look ready. Anyone got any prayers to say, then now’s the last chance to say them.’
The flyer hit a fresh batch of turbulence and shuddered as if it were afraid. Opposite Vaughn, sitting next to Fane, Salia Tashac had screwed her eyes shut. There was a stripe of black soot smeared across the lids. Old habits die hard, Vaughn thought, his hands moving over his gun again. The Tallarn 43rd would probably have hanged Tash if they could catch her, but she still wore their warpaint. He wondered if she was praying or just bracing herself in case they fell out of the sky.
Vaughn unclipped his harness and stood up. He stepped to the door, and Nietzin leaned in to talk. The lieutenant was several inches taller than Vaughn, and his white hair brushed the roof. ‘All set?’ Vaughn asked.
Nietzin hefted the team’s plasma gun. ‘All set. Look, Lucan,’ he added, and the lines on his face seemed to deepen, ‘we’ve broken some laws before, but nothing like this.’
‘I didn’t think you’d mind.’ Vaughn glanced left, down the length of the cabin; Tash and Fane w
ere not listening.
‘Nor did I.’ The ship rocked and Vaughn grabbed a strap hanging from the roof. It was all he could do not to fall on his comrade. ‘Not to begin with. But this is serious blasphemy, friend.’
‘Well,’ Vaughn said, ‘what do you want to do, go back and tell Harsek we were overcome by a sudden outbreak of mercy? You know I can’t do that.’
‘That’s not what I’m saying.’ The older man paused. He seemed to realise that there was no point. The edge fell out of his voice. ‘I just wanted to say that I’ve got qualms.’
‘Me too. But what Harsek says, we do. It’s either us or them, you know that.’
‘It always is,’ Nietzin replied, his voice grim, and he drew back and checked the power dials on the side of his gun. ‘Never any other way.’
The intercom crackled. ‘One minute!’ Lao announced.
The flyer sank low, trembling. Through the window behind Nietzin’s shoulder, Vaughn saw the orange canyons and outcroppings of Rand XXI, and then towers and domes clinging to the rocks like spines on a monster’s back. As the flyer approached he made out individual buildings, then great stained-glass windows. At last he saw a round, landing pad, white as a plate, decorated with a huge fleur-de-lys. And then the flyer banked, twisted, and the legs struck the landing pad with a lurch that sent Vaughn reeling. The door dropped open in front of him and he cried, ‘Let’s move!’, and the strike team ran into the thin mountain air.
His boots hit the plascrete and suddenly he was in the open, ducking out from under the roaring engines of the flyer. Vaughn took in the fortress-priory before him, running along the ridge like a grey crest. In that same moment he saw the mountains in the distance, barren and red, and felt terribly exposed. Time to get to cover. He glanced back, saw the team behind him, and heard the engines start to rise into a roar.
At the far end of the landing pad, steps carved into the mountain led down towards the priory itself. A figure rose into view as it climbed the last few steps, robes and hair whipping in the breeze, the red bulk of a bolter held across an armoured chest.
A Sister of Battle. Vaughn was not sure he’d ever seen one before – at least, not at this range. She looked tougher than he’d expected, hard-eyed and callous. She was calling out something about landing clearance that she’d started to say on the steps, her voice raised above the engines and the wind.
‘You,’ Vaughn yelled, ‘Drop your weapon!’
It was pointless, of course. As soon as she saw them properly, the bolter was swinging up in her gauntleted hands, and as soon as she moved Vaughn’s men fired. Their guns were rigged for just this purpose, wired to hotshot power packs: a set of vicious cracks came from the right, and the Sister folded. She stood at the edge of the landing pad, doubled over. As Vaughn approached she looked up, and the blood running from her nose and mouth was shockingly red against her pale face. Then she fell onto the ground.
Vaughn reached the edge of the landing pad and looked down. It was a long climb on the stairs, and an even longer drop onto the mountainside. He’d never liked heights.
The dead woman’s armour had been polished until it shone like black marble. One of the lasgun shots had punched straight through her chest. The hole in her armour looked like a tiny stone thrown through a plate of tinted glass.
For a long moment Vaughn looked at her. Death had made her face as pale as a porcelain doll’s, the skin smooth and pallid as candle wax. There was a little prayer-scroll woven into her dark brown hair.
Then he but his boot against the dead woman’s hip and shoved her off the landing pad and into the abyss.
‘That’s a long way down,’ Fane said. He’d grown up in a hive city, where sunlight had been a rarity.
Vaughn ran onto the steps, and as he did the roar of the engines swelled up and Lao’s flyer heaved itself into the sky. The dirty white ship swung in the air, turned to the north and dropped out of sight behind the mountainside, following the canyons.
Vaughn began to climb down the steps, as quickly as he could without losing his balance. The thought of falling made him queasy, of bumping down a hundred hard stairs before dropping into the canyon. He heard his men hurry down after him, in a rattle of kit and armour plate.
Well, Vaughn thought, one thing’s for sure, there’s no going back now.
Two hundred steps so far. A slow fire was burning in his calf muscles. Behind him, Tash was the first to curse. Vaughn ignored her. As ever, he knew that it wasn’t her fault that she was hard to like.
The priory grew closer. He saw the details of the stained glass and the flapping banners. He made out the words ‘Imperator Deus’ in gilt lettering above the nearest pair of double doors.
By the saints, we’re exposed. A few bolter shells, one missile, and we’d be done for.
It wouldn’t even have to hit them, he realised. The force from a frag shell would knock the whole team over the edge. Despite the ache in his legs, he sped up.
As he ran Vaughn took out his monocular and studied the side of the priory. He wondered how the Sisters of Battle brought in their supplies: they wouldn’t make their own armaments, surely. Perhaps there was another landing pad, one he hadn’t been briefed about. That didn’t bode well. Or perhaps the Sisters carried all their gear down these stairs – backbreaking work, even if you didn’t fall into the canyon below. They’d probably think it was good for the soul.
The team kept up a good pace, even Nietzin. ‘You need me to carry you, old man?’ Fane demanded. Nietzin puffed out a curse in response. Vaughn’s gun bumped against his side.
As they approached the fortress, it occurred to Vaughn that he really didn’t know much about the Sisterhood at all. His knowledge was limited to awed rumours, a couple of mission briefings, and some dirty, heretical jokes he’d picked up in the Guard, the sort of thing that would get you into serious trouble with the commissar. He had no idea what to expect. He remembered his old company commander’s adage: When you don’t know the enemy, go in hard. You’ll either terrify them into surrender, or–
Or you’ll die serving the Emperor. Great.
‘Come on, people, pick it up!’ Vaughn snarled over his shoulder, and he quickened the pace once more.
If Harsek’s information was right – and Vaughn had his doubts about that – it would be ten standard minutes before anyone checked the landing pad. He visualised the little diagram, sketched with a blunt pencil on scrap paper like most of the best battle plans he’d made. To the east was the main body of the priory, the buildings rising in sanctity as they rose in height: domitarium, then scholarium and training chambers, and finally the dome of the Chapel Santissimus on the peak of the ridge. To the left, the lower buildings squatted on the rock: the refectorium, storehouses and hospital, where the less important matters of the body could be taken care of, overshadowed by the buildings of the soul.
The stairs flattened out. Together the team ran over a stone bridge broad enough to take a Baneblade tank, a sanctified banner flapping at either end. There were skulls on the banner poles, with letters scrimshawed into the bone. Vaughn didn’t stop to see whether they were the skulls of heretics or saints.
The building before them was grey stone, quarried off-world and barely decorated. A path ran around the edge, lashed by wind, its handrails little more than metal spikes linked by old rope. Vaughn jogged into its shadow, and the team followed him. His breath was still tight from running, but his body seemed to sigh. They were out of view of the main buildings now. It should be a bit further down the wall, he thought, remembering his sketch. Just a bit further – please, let it be here...
There it was. A metre across, hardly more than a bulkhead adorned with a plain fleur-de-lys of tarnished steel, the edges brushed shiny silver by generations of howling wind. Beside the door, to Vaughn’s relief, was a little keypad under a metal skull. The skull’s left eye shone red.
He looked back at Nietzin. ‘You know what to do,’ he said, stepping aside. ‘Fane, Tash, watch the sides.�
�
The older man took a plain grey data-slate from his thigh pocket. Nietzin turned it over in his hands, his lips moving. Then he leaned in and pressed the slate to the keypad. Slowly, he drew it down the lock.
Nothing happened. Vaughn checked his watch. By now, according to Harsek’s information, the guard from the landing pad ought to be checking back in at the dormitarium. Any moment now, the Sisters of Battle would begin to wonder where she had gone.
With a loud click, the skull’s red left eye went dead. Its right eye flared into bright green life. The door slid back, and they were looking into a tiny lift, just big enough to hold four men.
The lift shuddered and rattled as it descended, as if it had detected the presence of intruders and was trying to shake them out. Vaughn stood pressed against Nietzin, with Fane on his left and his lasgun held up beside his head as if presenting arms on parade. It occurred to him that if the lift jolted hard enough, the gun would probably go off and blast his ear away. These things were custom models, bought by Harsek’s dealer through some complex, back-alley arrangement: still, they couldn’t be much less reliable than the Departmento Munitorium versions he’d hefted back in the Guard.
‘We’ll come out in the storerooms,’ Vaughn said. ‘Once the lift stops, blast the controls and seal the doors shut. We’ll take the access stairs on the way back. There shouldn’t be anyone around – nobody to set off the alarms, that is. Then we make our way to the main cogitator. Once the main cogitator is out, we’ll head down to the cells. The cells will have powered doors – besides, each section of this place is probably airlocked. The last thing we need are the Sisters trapping us.’
And who knows what we’ll find waiting for us down there?
They nodded.
Fane said, ‘Seal off the sector, then make it ours. Like how we used to do it in the hive.’ His skin had always had a pallid, greenish tint, the result of years of living off synthetic food in a warren of bad light and polluted air. The weak red glow of the lift made him almost spectral.
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